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The Israeli military conducted overnight operations targeting what an army spokesman described to AFP as monuments to terrorists without explicitly tying the activity to the anniversary of the 2023 attacks that killed about 1,200 people in Israel. In the Jenin governorate troops destroyed a stone memorial for Yasser Hamdouni in the town of Yaabad and removed commemorative posters from several locations in Jenin city according to governorate spokeswoman Hala Abu Baker who spoke to the same agency. Hamdouni died in 2016 while serving a life sentence for killing an Israeli settler in 2003. Similar steps were taken in Nablus where five memorials were dismantled and scores of residents arrested as reported to AFP by deputy mayor Iyad Bakeer.
Palestinians commonly install such memorials and posters for those killed by Israeli forces or who die in prison referring to them as martyrs a practice that Israeli officials have long denounced as glorification of violence. The raids occurred in areas nominally under Palestinian Authority administration where the military rarely conducts such demolitions according to Palestinian accounts shared with AFP. The actions come amid heightened activity in the northern West Bank where Israeli forces have stepped up operations in recent months.
The latest moves follow a letter from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late August that included a list of approximately 40 Palestinian memorials proposed for removal as reported by Al Jazeera. That request arrived days after Knesset member Zvi Sukkot from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party damaged a monument in the village of Madama with a sledgehammer while soldiers stood nearby The New York Times reported at the time. The military responded that Sukkot had acted without authorisation deviating from an approved tour and that troops were ordered to halt the activity and remove the group.
Israeli forces also stormed Birzeit University near Ramallah on October 6 using a bulldozer to demolish a stone pillar listing 38 students and alumni killed over decades before leaving a fig sapling with an inscription directing people to water it twice according to university officials and an Al Jazeera account. The raid represented the fifth incursion onto the campus in 2026 and the 28th since 2002 the university said in a statement. Students later gathered at the site to rewrite the names that had been on the memorial and stage a protest.
The Israeli military has stated that it routinely removes symbols of incitement after receiving proper coordination with civil authorities though it has not released overall figures on such actions. Palestinian representatives have tracked what they describe as a growing campaign against civic and cultural markers particularly in Jenin where another monument built from wreckage of prior military incursions was also taken down. No further details on the total number of sites affected this week were immediately available from either side.
